1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to frozen potato strips which are French fryable and to a method of preparing French fryable potato strips for freezing.
For producing quick-service French fried potatoes, it is important that a stock of French fryable potato strips be available to meet varying demands. Customers prefer to have French fried potatoes that have the texture, flavor and odor of freshly deep fat fried raw potatoes, but they do not want to wait to have such potatoes cooked. Consequently, it is desirable to be able to subject the potato strips to a very brief final heating or finish cooking while producing an attractive and palatable product.
The demand for French fried potato strips is not particularly seasonal, yet the growing of the potatoes from which they are made is seasonal. Consequently, it is necessary to utilize a practical method of preserving potatoes, or French fryable potato strips, for a considerable period of time, up to a year, and it is customary to accomplish such preservation of French fryable potato strips by freezing. A stock of frozen French fryable potato strips thus can be accumulated immediately following the potato growing season and the stock can be distributed as needed to meet the substantially constant demand for French fryable potato strips throughout the following year.
2. Prior Art
Frozen potato strips have been used for making quick-service French fried potatoes, but such French fried potatoes have generally not been of the best quality, having one or more of the characteristics of sogginess, pale color, lack of crispness, poor flavor, a leathery shell and an interior that is undercooked or pasty instead of being mealy throughout.
In some instances, prior to being frozen, potato strips have been blanched, as in Strong U.S. Pat. No. 3,397,993 and Wilder U.S. Pat. No. 3,649,305, or partially cooked in water, or partially deep fat fried, or partially dehydrated, or subjected to some combination of such process steps. Such French fryable strips often have not been of good quality.
The Katucki et al. U.S. Pat. No. 3,359,123 proposes to use heated air for partially cooking whole unpeeled potatoes prior to being frozen, but the potatoes are dehydrated after being frozen rather than prior to being frozen.
The potato strips of the Barskey et al. U.S. Pat. No. 2,565,942 are partially dried or cooked in water prior to being frozen.
The Kaehler U.S. Pat. No. 3,244,538 proposes to subject potato strips to a preliminary drying step using dry heat or superheated steam prior to the potatoes being frozen, but any cooking effect which occurs extends only to the exterior of the potato, leaving the interior substantially uncooked or raw.